Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

PREFACE
To
THE FIRST EDITION.
THE study of Greek and Roman Antiquities has, in common with all other
philological studies, made great progress in Europe within the last fifty years.
The earlier writers on the subject, whose works are contained in the collections
of Gronovius and Groevius, display little historical criticism, and give no comprehensive view or living idea of the public and private life of the ancients.
They were contented, for the most part, with merely collecting facts, and arranging them in some systematic form, and seemed not to have felt the want of any
thing more: they wrote about antiquity as if the people had never existed;
they did not attempt to realise to their own minds, or to represent to those of
others, the living spirit of Greek and Roman civilisation. But by the labours
of modern scholars life has been breathed into the study: men are no longer
satisfied with isolated facts on separate departments of the subject, but endea?
your to form some conception of antiquity as an organic whole, and to trace
the relation of one part to another.
There is scarcely a single subject included under the general name of Greek
and Roman Antiquities, which has not received elucidation from the writings
of the modern scholars of Germany. The history and political relations of the
nations of antiquity have been placed in an entirely different light since the
publication of Niebuhr's Roman History, which gave a new impulse to the
study, and has been succeeded by the works of Bdckh, K. 0. MiUller, Wachsmluth, K. F. Hiermann, and other distinguished scholars. The study of the
Roman law, which has been unaccountably neglected in this country, has been
prosecuted with extraordinary success by the great jurists of Germany, among
whom Savigny stands preeminent, and claims our profoundest admiration.
The subject of Attic law, though in a scientific point of view one of much
less interest and importance than the Roman law, but without a competent
knowledge of which it is impossible to understand the Greek orators, has also
received much elucidation from the writings of Meier, Schamann, Bunsen,
Platner, JHudtwalcker, and others. Nor has the private life of the ancients
been neglected. The discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii has supplied
a